I'm Jonathan Cape Heart.

I'm Jonathan Cape Heart.

Welcome to this special edition of Cape Up.

Two separate interviews with two elected officials in two different jurisdictions

dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

We start with Governor Whitmer who after instituting one of the strictest stay-at-home orders in the nation

is getting set to review them and ask her why after all

the attacks from President Trump she's polling better than him in a brand new Fox

news poll.

Governor Whitmer, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Glad to be with you.

So you have one of the strictest stay-at-home orders, and now word comes that you're now re-evaluating that stay at home order.

What's changed to make that possible?

So first, you know, I want to share kind of the rational why we have one of the strictest stay home orders.

Michigan is the 10th most populous state in the nation and yet we had the third highest death rate in the nation and that's something that has just

absolutely devastated communities across my state.

It's created an incredible amount of fear and concern and we know that

COVID-19 was spreading far and wide long before it was ever detected via test and so I took actions to keep people safe and they're more

restrictive than other states, but I thought that it was absolutely essential.

After a few weeks of this stay-home posture, we have seen our trajectory really start to flatten. We've saved lives. And one of the things about public health is when you're successful you're never able to really

quantify precisely how many lives you save but we know that this strategy is

working here in Michigan. Every day we're learning more about COVID-19. We are

crunching the data. We are learning more through increased testing. We're not

...